six o’clock
alarm goes goes off
look out the window to see night time
with still AM plastered on the lock screen
rub that reality from your eyes
till they’re sore and the clock reads
five after
shower quickly,
get dressed,
paint enthusiasm on your face
“Maybe she’s born with it,
maybe it’s just play pretend”
it smudges under her eyes by fourth period
and by 2:44 it’s gone
“whatever”
“nah im fine”
“no, i’m just tired”
“i’m okay”
“i’m okay”
“i’m okay”
i haven’t been okay since 2010
that’s one
two
three
four
five years:
one whole hand.
would it be better to just quit?
to have nothing:
no more “okays”
but no more shortcomings?
“i don’t know,
can i just go back to bed?”
even the sun is still tucked away under sheets
the early bird has no worms to catch
i’ve already got them all.
it’s got to be some cosmic joke, right?
the prime of my life and i work like a dog
but i can’t howl at this damned moon
all i’ll hear is
“lazy kid”
“when i was your age, we didn’t have this or that”
“you have it so easy”
“you gotta get into a good college”
a dead girl can’t go to college, can she?
well she’s gone through high school, though
i see her in the hallways
her chest all marked up with bullet wounds
the bullets don’t read bullying
they don’t read abuse
they read something to the tune of
trigonometry
the bolshevik revolution
12 angry men
genetics
but the holes are plugged up
like ears plugged with fingers
that refuse to hear our bones
creaking under those twenty textbooks
those heavy anxieties
those panic attacks
the dead girl drags her feet
to her next period
and it’s just another nail in the coffin